The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash, 3)

I am the Chosen, the Blessed. Or so I have been told. But as Queen Eloana of Atlantia sinks to her knees, her words echo in the Temple of Nyktos, shattering everything I thought I knew. “Bow before your new Queen.” My gaze is fixed on the man before me, my guard, my friend, my husband. My everything. Casteel Da'Neer remains on one knee, his golden eyes locked with mine, and in them, I see no fear of what I've just done - of the blood I've spilled, of the power that erupted from me. “My Queen,” he breathes, and the two words soothe the ancient, primal thing stirring in my blood. But as he rises to come to me, the world fractures. A wolven snarls, not in warning for me, but at him. Kieran, his bonded brother, prepares to attack. The bonds, his mother explains, have broken. The drop of a god's blood in my veins supersedes any oath the wolven have taken. They now serve me.

The chaos is a living thing, threatening to consume us all. Wolven pour into the temple, answering a call I didn't know I'd made, their loyalty to me a terrifying, absolute thing that sees Casteel as a threat. They will rip him apart. I feel it, a horrifying certainty that steals my breath. But if they now obey me, then they must listen. “Stop,” I command, my voice ringing with a power I don't recognize. “You will not hurt Casteel.” And just like that, the snarling pack sinks to their bellies. In the stunned silence that follows, as Casteel's gaze holds mine, full of awe and something far more heated, a new betrayal unfolds. Alastir, his parents' advisor, gives a single command: “Protect your King and Queen.” Guards turn, not on me, but on Casteel. An arrow tipped with a gray, viscous substance strikes him. Another finds Kieran, and a third, his father, Jasper. I watch in horror as their skin turns the color of iron, their bodies hardening into stone, frozen in agony.

The world goes silent, all except for the frantic pounding of my own heart. I feel for Casteel's pulse and find nothing. He is gone. All of them, lost to me. A rage unlike anything I have ever known rises from the depths of my soul, dark and oily, tasting of vengeance. It lashes out, a tangible entity of silvery-white light that cracks the marble floors and shatters the stone statues of the gods. I am me, and yet I am something else entirely as I take up Casteel's fallen sword. Masked attackers, Descenters, swarm me, but they are nothing against this primal power. I move through them, a whirlwind of death, turning their own hatred back on them, breaking their bodies without a touch. I will bring this temple down, this kingdom, this world. I will make them all pay. But as the power surges, threatening to consume everything, a sharp, blinding pain explodes at the back of my head, and I fall into nothing.

I awaken in a crypt, chained to a wall with bindings of bone and root, surrounded by the skeletal remains of others who met this same fate. It is here that the full scope of the betrayal is revealed. Commander Jansen, whom I believed dead, appears, shifting his form to that of the young wolven Beckett, the one who led me to the temple. He confesses to killing the boy and taking his place, all part of a plan orchestrated by Alastir. They are not Descenters, but Protectors of Atlantia, a brotherhood that believes I am a prophesied Harbinger of Destruction. They speak of my ancestry, of the blood of the King of Gods, Nyktos, that flows through me. They tell me of the deities who grew too violent, too unpredictable, and had to be entombed in this very crypt. “Too much of a threat,” Jansen says. “Just like you.” They cannot kill me, for the wolven would rise up. Instead, they will give me to the Ascended, to the very people I have just escaped.

Casteel finds me. He tears through the Wastelands with Kieran and his father, Valyn, at his side, just as I am about to be handed over. The rescue is a blur of blood and fury. Casteel is a tempest, a beautiful, avenging storm. I face Jansen, the man who pretended to be a friend, and I keep the promise I made to him in that crypt. “I told you that I'd be the one to kill you,” I whisper, driving Casteel's sword into his chest. But as he falls, his own promise echoes in the ruins: “As do I.” A crossbow bolt, slick with a substance that feels like liquid ice, slams into my chest. The pain is absolute, a searing agony that steals my breath and the feeling from my legs. I am dying. I know it as Casteel holds me, his wild, desperate eyes pleading with mine. “I've got you,” he swears, but his tears trace paths through the blood on his face.

The world fades to the sound of his roar, a sound that splits the very earth and calls a blood tree from the ground. Lightning tears the sky apart as he makes a choice. “I will not lose you. Ever,” he vows, his voice breaking. “Even if you hate me for what I'm about to do.” He bites into my throat, but it is not the seductive pull of a vampry's kiss. It is fire. It is agony. He is Ascending me. I don't want to become a monster, soulless and cold, but I have no strength to fight. My heart falters, skips, and then stops. I fall into a lush, dark spice, into the sweet finality of death. But in the nothingness, a voice finds me. “Drink, Princess, drink for me…” I wake to a ravenous, gnawing hunger, a bloodlust so intense I try to feed from Kieran. But Casteel is there, offering his own wrist, his voice a lifeline pulling me back from the brink. And when clarity returns, I am not a vampry. I have no fangs, the sun does not burn my skin, and my heart - my soul - is still my own. I am something else. A deity. A god.

We return to Atlantia, and the world has changed. The golden trees of the Skotos Mountains now bear crimson leaves. The people of Saion's Cove, who once saw me as a threat, now kneel, calling me “Meyaah Liessa.” My Queen. The crown is mine by birthright, whether I want it or not. The choice Casteel gives me is simple and life-altering: claim the throne and he will rule at my side, or forsake it and he will leave his home, his kingdom, everything, to be with me. But there is no real choice. Not when his mother, Queen Eloana, reveals that Atlantia is on the brink of war with Solis, a war that will see all Ascended destroyed - including my brother, Ian, if he is what I fear. My decision is made, but before we can travel to the capital, Ian himself appears at the gates of Spessa's End, an Ascended with pitch-black eyes, requesting an audience.

The meeting is a trap, but not the one we expected. My brother stands with the Blood Queen, but so does another: Prince Malik, Casteel's brother, looking healthy, whole, and utterly devoted to the woman who held him captive. The final, devastating truth is revealed when the Queen steps into the sunlight, unharmed. She is not a vampry. She is Isbeth, King Malec's fabled heartmate, a god in her own right, created by his blood. And she claims to be my mother. She offers me a chance to join her, to take Atlantia in her name. When I refuse, she proves just how far she will go. “Kill him,” she commands, and a knight's blade slices through my brother's neck.

The rage that consumes me is apocalyptic. I unleash the full force of the eather, the power of a god, intending to tear her and her entire castle apart. But she is a god, too. She stops my power with a flick of her wrist and turns it back on me, her will an invisible hand crushing my throat, tearing at my mind. Casteel offers himself in my place, a sacrifice I am powerless to stop. “Take me,” he begs, and she does. I awaken in the woods, broken and alone, with only my friends and the fading marriage imprint on my palm as proof that he still lives. Isbeth has taken my brother. She has taken my King. But she has made a fatal mistake. She has shown me what I am. I am not a Maiden, a Princess, or just a Queen. I am a god, born of flesh and fire, and I will not be a pawn in her game of revenge. I will summon the guards of Nyktos. I will wake the draken. And I will burn her world to ash to get him back.